“Uh-huh.” Petra stared out the carriage window.

“And the Academy food is as good as anything served at court. Roasted pheasant served with quinces. Suckling pigs. Slabs of cinnamon cake. Foamy ginger milk. And imported chocolate. You said you liked Iris’s hot chocolate, didn’t you?”

“Great.”

Tomik looked at Petra, frustrated, and then at the spider on her shoulder. Astrophil was also watching the wintry countryside go by. “And the library. The library is excellent.”

“Eh?” Astrophil perked up.

“So many books.”

“Books?” Astrophil’s green eyes glowed. “You know, I have not read a good book in ages. Do you think they have a copy of Ambroise Paré’s book on medicine? When you hit your head in the woods, Tomik, it occurred to me that I would make an excellent doctor. I could even be a surgeon. Think of how many delicate procedures I could do with my fine, elegant legs. If I can weave a web, I can certainly stitch a wound. It is only a matter of research. And practice.” Astrophil talked on, and the squeaky noise of his chatter let Petra sink deeper into her silent thoughts.

“Petra,” Tomik said.

She shifted, uncomfortable in the fancy traveling dress Iris’s maid had put on her. It pinched. Petra now had a trunk packed with pretty dresses, and vials of dye she and Tomik had to use daily.

“Petra.”

Tomik’s voice was starting to feel like the dress, laying pressure on her in places where she used to feel free. “What?”

“Are you worried that you won’t pass the exam when we get there?”

“No.”

Tomik waited for her to say something more, and when she didn’t, he made an exasperated noise. “Aren’t you even the littlest bit interested in the Academy?”

She kept her eyes on the road, which was snaking up a hill just outside Prague. The driver had told them they would arrive in less than half an hour. She turned to face Tomik. “No,” she said. “And neither are you.”

He stared.

“If you wanted to roll around in wealth and gorge yourself on imported food, you would have done that in the Vatra,” Petra said. “You’re excited because you think you’ll learn something in the Academy. You won’t.”

“You … you think I’m not good enough?”

“You’re too good. Tomik, what makes you think you need someone to teach you how to use your magic? Look at all you’ve done.”

And look at everything you have done, Petra, Astrophil said. He jumped to Petra’s hand, which rested palm up on her knee. She considered him, a treasure in her hand. “Maybe…” she said. “Maybe the things you learn best are the ones you teach yourself.”

“How philosophical.” Tomik’s tone was sharp.

She looked at him, startled. She seemed to smell something bitter in the air.

“Why are you so distant?” he said. “You shut me out. You have, ever since the forest. You go away somewhere in your head and I’ve no idea what you’re thinking, or feeling. Maybe you and Astro are having grand, long, silent conversations about the worth of education. I don’t know. But if you want to exclude me I wish you would tell me why.”

It is true, Astrophil said. You have been distant. I have noticed, too.

That smell was growing worse. Petra recognized it, but couldn’t remember what it was. She focused on her friends, and hesitated. She had never wanted to tell them about her link to Neel. She knew Astrophil and Tomik wouldn’t like it. But something else held her back now, and she realized it was that her conversations with Neel had come to feel too special, too private for her to share the fact of them.

Petra felt suddenly weary. “None of this matters,” she said, and realized she was talking to herself as well as to her friends. “Tomik, there are things I can’t do. There are things I can’t feel.” She saw that he knew what she meant. She looked away from the hurt bleeding across his face. Gently, she said, “I know you’re excited about the Academy. But for me it will never be anything more than a place. It’s the place where I’m going to find out how to save my father. That’s all. That’s everything.”

The carriage jerked and the horses squealed as the driver hauled on the reins. Something green streaked past Petra’s window.

Tomik tore his gaze away from Petra’s face. He flung open the door. “What is going on?”

Petra pushed her way out of the carriage and glanced behind to see what had run past them.

It was a girl in green Academy robes. She was screaming.

Tomik gasped, and Petra wheeled around to stare up the hill. That smell had been smoke. Hundreds of people were running toward them, tumbling down the slope, racing to put as much distance as they could between them and the smoldering heap of ruins that used to be the Academy.

25

An Address

PETRA AND TOMIK chased the girl and dragged her to a stop. They tried to break through her hysteria.

“The rebels!” she gasped. “They set fire to the school! They’ll kill us all!”

“What are you talking about?” Petra demanded.

The girl shrank away. “You. You’re one of them. Peasants! Why don’t you crawl back to the dirt you came from!” Just as Petra realized that she hadn’t bothered to hide the accent that marked her class, the girl tore away from them and ran up the slope to the knot of students and teachers staring at what used to be the school.

A sudden thought filled Petra with fear. “Come on,” she shouted to Tomik. With Astrophil buried deeply into her hair, Petra ran after the girl.

When they reached the top of the hill, Petra shoved past weeping students to find a professor whose robes were dyed a deep shade of emerald. He was counting the students around him and didn’t notice Petra until she tugged at his sleeve. “Sir?” Petra tried to imitate the stiff, sweet pitch of a high-class accent. “Where is Professor Fiala Broshek?”

His look of worry deepened. “Missing.”

The answer stabbed into her. Petra looked at the Academy and realized that her plans were in ruins, too. She reeled as if the ground had vanished beneath her.

“What happened here?” Tomik asked the professor.

A crease appeared between his brows. “Who are you?”

“Students, sir. At least, we hoped to be students,” Tomik said humbly, in the perfect voice of a well-mannered young gentleman. Petra dimly realized that he was better at hiding himself than she was, and she should have let him do the talking to begin with. Well, that didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered, if Fiala Broshek was dead.

“We are here to take the entrance exam,” Tomik told the professor.

The man laid a hand on his shoulder. “I am sorry. It looks as if there will be no school for you to attend. After lunch, all students and professors returned to the classrooms, as usual. But today there was a note scrawled on the walls inside every room: ‘Leave the Academy now, or pay with your lives.’ As soon as we’d led the students out of the building, there was an explosion. I’m sure when we rake the ashes, we will discover that gunpowder was the cause, probably several kegs of it. Mercifully, every student is safe. Scared, yet safe. But Professor Broshek is missing. Perhaps we haven’t noticed her yet, in the chaos.” He shook his head and sighed heavily. “I am trying to fool myself. We have taken careful count of everyone here. There’s only one place she can be.” His eyes strayed to the rubble.

Petra had heard enough. She walked away. She registered the fact that one of the students was staring at her strangely, but she didn’t care if she had been recognized. She didn’t care if the boy decided to howl for everyone to seize her, or that, in the end, he didn’t say anything. Petra kept walking until she reached the carriage. She got inside, slammed the door, and curled her knees to her chest.

The driver began pestering her through the open panel between the carriage and his seat. “What happened? How did the Academy burn down? Are there any dead?” Petra yanked the wooden panel shut, latched it, and ignored his knocking.

She ignored Astrophil, who was jumping up and down on her foot. She ignored Tomik, who wrenched open the door. “You don’t know Fiala Broshek is dead,” he said as he climbed inside. “There’s no body. She’s missing, Petra. Missing. Maybe she just walked away from the fire. We can find her.”

Petra glanced at him then, and the expression on his face unleashed a fury inside her. He had no right to look so distraught. “Don’t pretend you’re upset. If you are, it’s only because your precious Academy is gone.”

“No.” Tomik ran a hand through his dyed black hair. “No, I—”

“Tomik is correct,” Astrophil said sternly. “All is not lost.” He stood on his hind legs and rested two other legs on his thorax like a human might place impatient hands on his hips. “Is no one thinking of the possibility that Fiala Broshek started the fire, and she had reasons she wished to hide, and that that is why she is nowhere to be found?”

Petra blinked at him. The shreds of her thoughts began to knit together again. “I want to believe you,” she whispered. “I need some kind of hope, even if it’s a stupid hope.”

“It’s not stupid,” Tomik said eagerly. “We just need to figure out how to find her. Maybe we should question the students and teachers. They might know something.”

“No,” said Astrophil. “A boy looked at Petra as if he recognized her. We have already attracted enough attention.”

The three of them fell silent, and Petra seemed to hear Astrophil’s gears whir faster as he pondered their next step. He glanced up and noticed them watching him, waiting. He sagged. “I do not know what to do,” he said.

For one wild moment, Petra considered choosing between her two magics, as the Metis had taught her. But even if the Choice worked, Petra didn’t see how it would help her now. The Choice wasn’t just dangerous and costly. It was also useless. Petra shoved all thoughts of it from her mind.

Frustrated, she grabbed fistfuls of her gorgeous, awful, violet skirts. Something crinkled inside them.

A sudden light shone in Petra’s eyes. She plunged her hand into a pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper. “There!” she said. “We can go there.” She held the paper out to her friends.

Astrophil took it with four legs and held it stretched out in front of him. “Lucas and Zora December, 8 Molodova Street, Prague. Oh, an excellent idea, Petra!”

“But Iris gave us her niece and nephew’s address so that we could send letters through them to her,” said Tomik, “not interrogate them about Fiala Broshek.”

“Ah, but Lucas and Zora December rank very highly in Bohemian aristocratic society,” said Astrophil. “If they are in Prague, they must attend court regularly. Perhaps they will know something.”

“But would they tell us?” said Tomik. “They don’t even know who we are—and if they did, that might give them even more reason not to help us, even to turn us in.”

“Iris would not have given us their address if she did not trust them,” said Astrophil.

Tomik bit his lip. “It’s a big risk.”

“Not as big a risk as doing nothing,” said Petra.

26

Suspects

THE MORNING AFTER THE POISONING, Neel made his way to the kitchen. He had snuck down there many times before to steal one thing or another. He knew the way well.

The head cook was a Lovari, and she trembled to see him enter. The king was younger than most Roma rulers, which would have made some people fear him less. But the cook’s experience told her that youth could be unpredictable, and savage in its vengeance.

“Please, Your Majesty,” she said, “it wasn’t me. I didn’t touch your food.” She began to babble. “I mean, of course I touched it. Don’t think I’d leave the preparation of the king’s food to underlings! I cooked your meal with these very hands. But I didn’t poison it. I tasted it myself.” A sudden thought made her clap a hand to her mouth. “Not that I was eating your food! I was just tasting it from time to time to make sure it had enough salt and spice.” Her eyes widened. “Not that your food was germy! I am a clean woman. Never a sick day in my life. And I cleaned the spoon each time before I dipped it in for a taste.”

Neel winced. “I don’t believe this.”

“All right,” the woman said miserably, “that was a lie, about the spoon. I didn’t wash it each time. But it started out clean, I swear.”

“No, I mean I don’t believe you think I came down here to accuse you of trying to kill me. Why would you? You’re Lovari. The Lovari are about the only Roma happy to see me on the throne.”

“Well … not all of them. Some of them think you’re a turncoat. You know, because your blood’s Kalderash.” She gasped, then added, “Not that I think you’re a traitor to your tribe!”

Neel fought a smile. “Course not. Even if you did, even if you wanted me trundling off to the cemetery in a one-way wagon, I don’t think you’d try to kill me in a way so easily traced back to you—unless you wanted to be caught, or were kind of dumb.”

“To tell the truth”—the cook lowered her voice—“I never was very smart.”

“You’re honest,” Neel corrected. “Maybe you’re playacting, but my guess is you’re just calling things as you see ’em, and a killer wouldn’t go out of her way to give me more reasons to say she’s guilty.”